Tiny Adventure

Enjoying a “Tiny Adventure” last Saturday afternoon

When I was a young boy, my family lived in a small development in south Jacksonville, about a half-mile north of Goodbys Lake. The neighborhood was named Montclair, and was made up of three parallel streets – Darnall Place, Leewood Lane, and Montclair Drive. From the time I was three until I was thirteen, 3628 Darnall Place was my home, and those three streets, my world.

Once I had my own bicycle, each afternoon after school I would take a tiny adventure. Hopping on my red Schwinn Stingray with its white banana seat, I would pedal my way around the neighborhood, always starting with the one-block loop from Darnall Place to Leewood Lane. In fact, I might complete that circuit several times before working up my courage to venture another block north onto Montclair Drive – the outer edge of my known world.

Those rides gave me such confidence and freedom, my bike might as well have been a space ship, carrying me into new dimensions when I rounded the corner at the end of our street. I always packed a snack, maybe a bologna sandwich, or a PB&J, a bag of Lays potato chips, and my red-and-black checked thermos topped up with cherry Kool-Aid, which kept me nourished as I expanded my possibilities.

When it was time to rest from my adventures, I would seek the security of one of my favorite destinations – either the thick stand of bamboo at the western end of our street or the giant live oak that sat on a rise above the eastern bank of the vast St. Johns River. Those places were my sanctuaries. If I needed time to think or just felt like being alone, I would pedal the Stingray for all I was worth and disappear from view. Nestled among the hundreds of shoots of bamboo or peering out towards the sun glistening on the river, my thoughts were free to roam, and I could just sit and listen to the sounds around me and watch for the next new thing to enter my world.

***

I mention these memories because it has been months and months since I have pedaled my trusty Surly Long Haul Trucker, well, anywhere. This is the bike I rode from St. Augustine to Taos, New Mexico, in the summer of 2010. I was fifty-four when I departed on that journey, fifty-five when I arrived in Taos. And after spending almost two thousand miles atop the Surly, she was no longer just a bicycle. She had become a part of me. Like the old red Stingray, she was a partner in my adventures.

While automobiles and airplanes can whisk us away quickly to far away places, a bike, well, it’s simply different. A bicycle is a romantic device. One that requires you to expend maximum effort to get where you intend to go. A bike is not a ticket in a seat or a heavy foot on the accelerator. It’s a love affair – and bike and rider are in it together.

I awoke yesterday, to a day that was bright and sunny and hinting of the warmth that speaks of spring –and noticed an ache deep inside that stretched back to the 1960s and 3628 Darnall Place. Over coffee, when my wife, Elisabeth, suggested we ride our bikes, I knew that was exactly the thing that could ease the ache.

Even now, at fifty-nine, just like when I was a kid, I have favorite places to visit on my bike. If I want to eyeball the comings and goings of a crowd, I pedal the six-and-a-half miles to Starbucks at the Publix plaza on the beach. It’s a good warm-up ride for an old guy who hasn’t pedaled anywhere in months. (Also, the short ride reminds me of the months leading up to my big bike tour of 2010, when I didn’t have time to really train for the long trip in front of me, but wanted to do something, so that when Departure Day arrived, I could say I had trained – at least a little.)

And that Starbucks was what Elisabeth suggested as our destination. We arrived and settled in to wait for my hot chocolate and her grande dirty chai, watching the other patrons: girls in workout clothes looking at their nails and pulling on strands of blond hair, old guys huddled outside the double doors talking politics and laughing at dirty jokes, and the impatient guy in madras shorts, who kept shifting his stance, digging his hands deep in his pockets, and sighing every time he spoke, like the mere act of ordering his java was all he could possibly undertake in this lifetime. The pretty girl behind the counter, meanwhile, seemed to be thinking of everything but coffee, and kept apologizing to those waiting for her mistakes – which were many.

It was a wonderful panorama of everyday folks out for an afternoon, a cup of coffee, a chance at conversation. The view around us was a snapshot of the world we have created. It wasn’t perfect, but it was reassuring, as if life may not be so complicated after all. I suddenly realized I felt better than I have in weeks, maybe months, and that it was the bike ride that had made the difference – the tiny adventure we conjured for ourselves had allowed me out of my head into a space of peace and hope, found in the most innocuous of places.

On the ride home I vowed to undertake more “tiny adventures” and made a mental list.

1. Ride my bike to Gainesville, eat lunch at the Southern Charm Kitchen, and visit with my friend Ken and his wife, Jennifer.
2. Ride to “The Hammock,” just south of Washington Oaks State Park and spend the night at a small motel.
3. Ride to Port Orange, south of Daytona, and stay over with my friends Frank and Nadine.
4. Order the Adventure Cycling maps for the Florida Connector, a cross- state bike trail from St. Augustine to Naples – then ride to Naples and catch the ferry to Key West.
5. Sometime soon, ride my Trusty Surly to San Diego, completing the Southern Tier bike trail – a distance of 3054 miles.
6. And then there’s the Pacific Coast bike route from Vancouver, B.C., to Imperial Beach, California – 1852 miles worth. Elisabeth wants to make that trip with me. Which will be fun, but we will have to wait until she finishes medical school.

(O.K. So numbers 4, 5, and 6 are not “tiny” adventures. But they are goals, and I plan to complete them.)

The truth of the matter is that I have come to a place where the road ahead of me is shorter than the rode behind me. Since the Appalachian Trail journey this fall, I’ve realized “I ain’t getting any younger.” So I’m asking – with renewed urgency – “What do I want in my life?” The answer? Less stuff and more of the stuff of life.

***

Elisabeth and I enjoying time at Starbucks. Our “Tiny Adventure” late Saturday afternoon.

A few years ago, I was in Jacksonville and took a drive around the old neighborhood. 3628 Darnall Place, my family home, still looked the same. Even the playhouse my dad built for me when I was in third grade was there. But the stand of bamboo that hosted so many of my daydreaming afternoons and picnics was gone, replaced by a small mansion. And the dirt path that led to the old live oak tree and the bluff overlooking the St. Johns was paved and blocked by huge wrought iron gates. Even so, when I closed my eyes, I could remember the feel of the soft ground beneath me as I leaned against the massive oak and ate my bologna sandwich, while gazing out across the river, a blaze of sunlit diamonds shimmering on the surface of its dark water. When I opened my eyes, I said a brief prayer of thanks to that old tree, hoping it had managed to survive the years.

As I drove away, leaving the new Jacksonville behind, I was taken aback at how small my old neighborhood actually was. To my ten-year-old self, it had been a vast world – one in which the longest ride of my life took me and my old red Stingray around and around a one-block loop, until, finally, I heeded the call of adventure and pedaled all the way to Montclair Drive.